One important measure of performance for a storage system is latency (i.e., the time it takes for a particular request to be serviced by the storage system). Latency introduced by a storage system, if of long enough duration, may cause, for example, a user to notice a delay in the loading of a webpage (in the case of read latency) or may cause, for example, a user to wait for files to be uploaded onto a Dropbox™ account (in the case of write latency).
In general, there may be numerous factors that contribute to the latency of a storage system, including network delays, a cache miss, disk read time, etc. To effectively combat latency, factor(s) that significantly contribute to the latency may be identified. In turn, software patches may be created and/or hardware resources may be allocated to address those factors. Identifying factor(s) that significantly contribute to a storage system's latency, however, is often a time intensive and computationally expensive process.